O Cracker Where Art Thou

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O Cracker Where Art Thou
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  1. Audio CD: Release Date 2003-05-06
  2. Publisher: Pitch a Tent
  3. Artist: Cracker, Leftover Salmon
  4. Sales Rank in Music: #53765

Product Review

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The idea of taking rock or pop songs and spinning them into bluegrass rave-ups isn’t a new one. Traditionalists such as Del McCoury have been doing it for years, and more recently jokesters Hayseed Dixie have turned it into a quickly predictable career, covering AC/DC , Kiss, and Aerosmith. Despite the title, O Cracker, Where Art Thou? is not simply a well-worn gag. Dave Lowery and Johnny Hickman have teamed with the Colorado jam band Leftover Salmon to re-imagine 10 Cracker songs, and the results are surprisingly effective. Clearly, the guys in Leftover Salmon are great musicians, and any temptation toward improvisational excess is held in check by a respect for the songs, which span Cracker’s career. Wisely, this includes a four-song cluster from the band's best album, Kerosene Hat, including a sexy "Sweet Potato," which effortlessly melds bluegrass pickin’ with New Orleans rhythm, and a version of "Low" haunted by creepy banjo, pedal steel-guitar, and a Hammond organ solo. Lowery's former band, Camper Van Beethoven, experimented with this sort of musical hybrid, too, with greater abandon but less instrumental expertise. There's no way that CVB could have pulled off the double-time banjo and mandolin fretwork required in a satisfyingly traditional run-through of "Teen Angst,"" or even made it through a simple country lament like "Mr. Wrong" without smirking a little too broadly. Fans of Camper Van will probably miss that band's punky attitude--which only surfaces once, on the smashed country waltz of "Eurotrash Girl"--but these 10 songs are good enough to be twisted into new shapes without betraying the old ones. --Keith Moerer
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Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Categorizing the impact, May 23, 2004
Grady Historian (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: O Cracker Where Art Thou (Audio CD)
Some people are just lucky. If you're a fan of both Leftover Salmon AND Cracker (like me), you can count yourself among the lucky ones. In "O Cracker, Where Art Thou?" you are getting an amazing melding of each band's strengths. The glories of Cracker lyrics combined with the instrumental musicality of Leftover Salmon will astound you. Although "Get Off This" provides a somewhat dismal context (Cracker at a county fair... on quaaludes), by the time "Sweet Potato" comes around the LoS stringers are in full sound. "Mr Wrong" exploits a twangy-country sound with excellent, syncopated keyboards courtesy of Bill McKay. "Teen Agnst" is also awesome with its newly-upbeat rhythms (think bango guy gone wild!).But how will the respective fans of Leftover Salmon or Cracker like this CD? I think back to the old Reese's commercials: "Your chocolate is in my peanut butter!" "No, your peanut butter is in my chocolate!"...Read more


8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Groundbreaking, May 23, 2003
David A. Marshall (Chesterfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: O Cracker Where Art Thou (Audio CD)
A few years ago I was playing banjo along with Cracker's Golden Age and realized how great this band would sound with a banjo. I suggested it on their web site and I'm sure it was lost among the hundreds of other posts. I had to wonder if the musicians even read their own web sites fan postings when they are so filled with idle chatter (mine excepted, of course).This album goes beyond my expectations. The current "bluegrass players" (many of whom used to play bluegrass and now have gone onto other things using those instruments) have really succeeded in reviving that genre of music (with some help from NPR that has been using it in fills between news for years). There are those that maintain the tradition faithfully like Ricky Skaggs and those like Bela Fleck that are taking it toward jazz and world music. And then a bunch of others doing stuff in between like String Cheese Incident. But none of this has really done it for me. Either the musical gymnastics are self-indulgent...Read more


4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Even better than the originals, January 25, 2004
W. A. Norris (Redmond, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: O Cracker Where Art Thou (Audio CD)
I have no idea where the concept for this CD came from, but it's inspired. I'm a Lowery fan from way back, and I can't even imagine how many times I must have listened to Kerosene Hat. And I haven't heard a lot of Leftover Salmon, but I've really liked what I've heard. Put them together, and you get this classic album. Yeah, it could be longer, but so what? The point is that what's here is terrific. The version of "Mr. Wrong" is far better than the original -- Lowery renders it more as wry this time, instead of as a wisecrack -- and hearing "Eurotrash Girl" turned into a country waltz is priceless. "Sweet Potato" and "Lonesome Johnny Blues" are so perfect for this arrangement that the instrumentation sounds more natural for the songs than the originals. The instrumental work totally reinvents "Teen Angst." Overall, if you're not familiar with Cracker, the strong songwriting and the brilliant instrumental work by Leftover Salmon should...Read more

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